


Til The End of the Line

by CheshireMoon



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Til the End of the Line
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:46:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1894449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheshireMoon/pseuds/CheshireMoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two broken men severely out of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Til The End of the Line

**Author's Note:**

> Was a ficlet prompt from tumblr user brbimreading. My first Steve/Bucky type thing. This is the basis of my shipping of them, this is the base part of it, the fact that they're the only two who can really understand what the other has gone through, the only thing they have left from their old lives.

Droplets splattered across the window as Steve stared out at the rain soaked city.  A sigh moved through him as a flash of lightening dashed its way across the sky, a long, low peal of thunder following soon afterwards.  He turned his head minutely towards the door for a moment, attempting to ascertain if there’d been a knock at the door or if it had simply been the rumble of the thunder tricking him.

When no additional knock sounded during the following seconds, he settled back into the chair once more, clasping his hands in his lap.

Try as he might, Steve couldn’t keep his thoughts on the straight and narrow.  They kept wandering to seventy years in the past, to Peggy and to the Howling Commandos and… To Bucky.  Steve’s hands tightened slightly, fingers squeezing until his knuckles turned white.  Much of the evening had been spent in uncharacteristic wallowing.  His search to find Bucky had come up empty, leaving Steve only with the echoed words of the ‘Winter Soldier’ and the haunted faces of a man who was neither Bucky nor Hydra’s agent.  

Steve looked up suddenly at the distinctive and reverberating sound of a knock at the door.  The sound rippled through the small apartment before being swallowed by the sound of the rain on the window.  

"Guess I didn’t imagine it after all," he muttered to himself as he stood while another clap of thunder sounded in the distance.  

He opened the door and froze at the sight of the wet visage before him.  Something inside Steve crumbled, and he couldn’t be sure if what was left was relief or fear.  Bucky stood staring at Steve, dressed in jeans that didn’t fight right and a hoodie that was far too large for him.  His long, dark hair was soaked thoroughly through, jet black with the moisture.  Steve swallowed sharply as he met the dark pair of blue eyes that belonged both to his best friend and to someone he felt a thousand miles away from.

"Bucky?"  The sound came out soft, almost hidden beneath the sound of another long, loud peal of thunder.  Bucky shifted his feet, looking almost uncomfortable.  

"Steve."  It came out as a statement rather than a question, and the word seemed strange from Bucky’s mouth, as if he was testing it out, unsure of it.  Steve’s throat felt tight at the sound.  

"You’re soaked to the bone, Buck, c’mon in.  Let’s get you dried off and into some dry, clean clothes, okay?"  Steve held a hand out uncertainly, almost like an offering.  Bucky glanced down at it and reached out for it with a glove covered hand.  There was a moment’s hesitation while his gaze flicked between Steve and his hand, and then he took it.  Steve could feel the cold metal underneath the wet glove, could feel the hard ridges of the metallic hand.

He pulled Bucky into the apartment and directed him to the centre of the living room, where he left him momentarily to duck into the bathroom.  His mind was spinning, wondering what to say, wondering what he  _could_ say.  He’d just spent months looking for Bucky, following every single lead he could come up with, and yet always coming up dry.  And suddenly the man showed up on his doorstep.

Bucky hadn’t moved when he returned to the living room with a towel.  The man watched him with intense blue eyes riddled with emotions that Steve couldn’t manage to unravel.  He held the towel out to him, but Bucky just stared at it, so Steve took a deep breath and stepped forward, opening the towel.

"Look at the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Bucky," Steve found himself saying automatically as he dropped the towel onto Bucky’s head.  He ruffled it a few times.  "Running around in the rain, you’ll catch your death."  Bucky’s expression had softened to something more neutral, and it put Steve more at ease.  He looked a little more like the man Steve had known seventy years prior.

"C’mon."  He grabbed Bucky’s hand again and pulled him into the bedroom, leaving him standing near the doorway as Steve went to rifle through his drawers.  He pulled a plain black t-shirt and a pair of sweats out and set them on the end of his bed.  He walked over to Bucky and gave his hair another almost affectionate ruffle.

"Go on and get dressed.  I’ll be right outside," Steve said a little hesitantly, unsure if Bucky would actually do it.  He’d been so still and silent except for speaking Steve’s name when he first arrived.  Regardless, Steve stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him and returning to the semi-darkness of his living room.  He stood for a few moments, licking his overly dry lips.  Slowly he made his way to the window, staring out at the city, where the rain had grown heavier and the dark had grown thicker.  He crossed his arms over his chest, going still.

"Where’ve you been all this time, Bucky?"  He murmured to himself after a few minutes of waiting, the words more to himself than anything.  It was only his soldier’s instincts that kept him from starting violently at the sudden voice from behind him.

"Finding myself again."  He turned to find Bucky wearing the clothes that Steve had laid out for him, holding the towel in one hand and his wet clothes in the other.  The sight of the shining metallic arm was still something of a shock, but he tried to keep the surprise and morbid curiosity about it out of his expression.  He took the wet clothes from him, snagging the towel and tossing it back onto Bucky’s wet hair.  

"I was looking for you, Buck," Steve said quietly as he made his way to the small laundry closet in the hallway, putting the clothes in the washing machine.  When he returned, Bucky hadn’t moved and was instead staring out at the storm, the towel having slid down a little so that one fluffy edge was hanging over one of his blue eyes.  

"I had to find me before I could allow anyone else to."  There was almost a bitter edge to the words as he spoke without looking at Steve.

"One of my leads was that you’d visited the exhibit about us, about the Howling Commandos—" Before he could continue, Bucky jumped in.

"You mean the exhibit about you."  The words were mostly flat with no malicious edge.  If anything, it seemed that Bucky tried to put something of a smile into the words, though Steve barely caught it.  It kindled the little bit of hope he had that maybe he could get his best friend his back in his entirety.

"Yes, I guess you could say that.  I like to think it’s for all of us.  But, did you really go there?"  There was a long and distinctive pause.

"Yes."

"Why?"  Another pause.

"Because I thought that if I could remember you fully, then I could remember myself," Bucky murmured.  The words surprised a, "Why?" out of Steve.

"Because you were the only thing that got through Hydra’s brainwashing.  Seeing you, seeing your face when you realised who I was, that was the only thing that could break through what they had done to me."  He finally turned to look at Steve.

"So, does that mean you remember everything now, Buck?"  Steve whispered.  Bucky simply nodded.

A particularly loud clap of thunder sounded and broke Bucky’s concentration, making him flinch rather visibly.  Steve surged forward instantly, but Bucky waved him off.

"It’s fine. I’m fine.  Nights are just hard.  That’s why I…." He trailed off, pressing his lips together tightly, staring out the window again.  "I think that’s why I came here.  I remember everything.  I remember you, but I also remember everything I did while Hydra had me.  It feels like two people battling inside my head, and I can’t handle it very well.  All of those people I killed, simply because I was told to."  Bucky’s voice began to waver, began to lose the flatness that it’d had since he’d arrived.  "I was in the Army, I went to defend this country and save lives, but I wasn’t strong enough to continue that duty when Hydra got me.  I failed, Steve.  I failed you, everything you ever wanted to stand for."  Steve stepped forward suddenly and wrapped his arms around Bucky instinctively, hoping that he wouldn’t pull away.  

Instead, Bucky leaned into his old friend’s embrace, going somewhat limp.  He didn’t cry, but he didn’t speak anymore.  Steve shuffled them over to the couch, sitting so that Bucky was beside him, giving him the option to pull away.  He didn’t.  

"I know, buddy.  I know.  I was out for seventy years.  When I went under, the world was at war. I wake up, they say we won… They didn’t say what we lost.”  Steve swallowed hard while Bucky continued to simply lean in against him.  ”But I knew what I lost.  I lost friends.  I lost so much time.  I lost my best friend.  And then I find out that Hydra took you and turned you into something you’d have hated.  They turned you into a tool to do the opposite of what either of us would have ever chosen.”  Bucky shifted, leaning more heavily into Steve, his metal hand grasping at Steve’s white shirt, pinching the fabric between a few fingers.  The metal was cold against Steve’s skin through the shirt, but he barely noticed.  

He put a hand on the towel that had somehow stayed on Bucky’s head and shifted it away.  

"Your hair’s still wet, Buck," Steve murmured quietly, barely paying attention to what he was saying.  The towel fell to the floor and Steve’s hand came to rest on top of the man’s head, his eyes turning once more to the window.  The rain fell as heavily as ever, and he just watched it splash against the window for several long minutes, shifting his arm to around Bucky’s shoulders when he felt a slight tremble roll through Bucky’s body.  

"Night’s are hard for me too.  We’re two broken things set out of time, aren’t we, Buck?"  Steve muttered.  Bucky didn’t acknowledge his statement, but somehow Steve knew he heard.  They remained silent, Steve staring at the rain while listening to the thunder and to Bucky’s somewhat irregular breathing, arm still around his shoulders, tightening his hold whenever he felt Bucky needed it.  

"Til the end of the line?"  Bucky murmured after a long, silent while.  Steve extricated himself from his own thoughts and glanced down at Bucky, who hadn’t moved.  Though he knew Bucky couldn’t see him, he nodded vaguely.

"Til the end of the line."

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at @sammylied on tumblr~ If you have any prompts, I'd be glad to give 'em a go, just send me an ask and lemme know!


End file.
